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Unless I’m mistaken, the TextSecure app (which provides encrypted text messaging—both over the wire and on disk) was pulled from the market a while back, leaving no way to install the app is readily available from the Market. Just today, however, the source code was released to the public. How can I build the app from source code and get it onto my phone?

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Still shows up in the Market for me market.android.com/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms this is the same app that their product page (on the site you linked to) links to. – GAThrawn Dec 21 '11 at 13:26
If it was in fact pulled, you may want to find out why it was pulled before reinstalling it. – SaintWacko Dec 21 '11 at 17:31
Oh, don’t listen to me—it looks like it was never pulled. I don’t know why I had such trouble finding it before. Anyway, my real motivation was to get the .apk without going through the Market since I don’t have the Market installed on my phone. :) – Michael Kropat Dec 22 '11 at 3:22

1 Answer

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I know nothing about Android development, so keep that in mind. Following various instructions online, however, I was able to build the source and put it on my phone. Perhaps someone who knows what they’re doing can come along and explain how it really should be done. Until then…

  1. Install and configure the Android SDK. Make sure you add the SDK tools to your PATH. I’m building this on Linux, but if you know what you’re doing it should be possible to follow along on Windows.

    You may need to run android and install various platform software for the build to work. I did this a while back, so I don’t remember exactly what I had to do. Sorry.

  2. Download the source code (requires git):

    git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure.git

  3. Enter the source directory and build the app.

    cd TextSecure
android update project --name textsecure --path . --target android-7
ant release

  4. Cross your fingers. Hopefully the build succeeds. If it does, we will need to sign the newly built .apk file, textsecure-unsigned.apk, before Android will let you install it.

    cp bin/textsecure-unsigned.apk bin/textsecure.apk
keytool -genkey -keystore mykeystore -validity 10000
jarsigner -keystore mykeystore bin/textsecure.apk mykey

    Running keytool will prompt you to enter a bunch of information, as well as a password. Enter whatever you please, as it shouldn’t matter.

  5. Copy the apk file, textsecure.apk, to the SDCard on your phone. Install it like you would any other non-Market application.

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Note that the typical Android app development is done on Eclipse with ADT plugin. The ADT plugin will handle compiling, signing, and uploading the app to your phone. The process of compiling and installing is much easier if you use Eclipse, although Eclipse is a (very) huge IDE, so if you don't have further interest in developing Android application, doing it the manual way as described by Michael could be a viable alternative. – Lie Ryan Dec 21 '11 at 11:24

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